As I was perusing my list of subscribed blogs I stumbled across a blog 
by jami89 entitled the Rise and Fall of Print Journalism. Now, I’m not so much interested in the rise of it all, because it goes back to 59 BC, which to me is of no interest. Besides, it only gets interesting during time William R. Hearst began to take over the newspaper industry in New York City with over 30 papers under his thumb and by instigating the largest a circulation rivalry at the time with Joseph Pultizer.
Which then lead to the creation of “yellow journalism” which is, in my opinion, a gaping wound in the history print since it sensationalized news and was rumored to be increasing conflict rather than reporting on it. As Martin Lee and Norman Solomon noted in their 1990 book Unreliable Sources, Hearst “routinely invented sensational stories, faked interviews, ran phony pictures and distorted real events.” But like I said the past doesn’t interest me, as much as its future does.
To me, the medium of print is wading in the waters of uncertainty; it’s simply drifting along with the current hoping it won’t be consumed by the wave of new media, with its fancy visuals and moving pictures and audience interactivity. So they sit and wait in fear and anxiety that the issue they just sent to the press won’t be their last.
If newspapers do become an extinct medium of media’s past, it will have the internet to thank. Since its emergence newspapers have been struggling to compete with the internet, due to society’s increased need and preference of visuals over text. An internet study was done by an NYU Professor, Jay Rosen, in 2006 and he found that 73 percent of all internet users get their news from the internet.
This has proven to become a main concern for newspapers. According to the author the book “The Vanishing Newspaper”, Philip Meyer calculates that the first quarter of 2043 will be the moment when newsprint dies in America. If Meyer is correct in his prediction I’ll be 54 years old and possibly out of a job! Now this scares me, since I do wish to seek a career in the journalism field; however, like many currently working in the field I’m learning to adapt and adopt new forms of technology in order to better the chances of keeping and even getting a job in the future.
But I don’t think newspapers are down for the count just yet, they’ve begun to allow their newspaper articles to be available to internet users online, and for the most part free of charge. They’ve also included short clips on their websites of different news segments, similar to that of a sports reel of the day’s best game plays and highlights.
I’m hoping that print has a few more tricks up their sleeves, in order to stay around for longer than predicted by Philip Meyer, because reading the newspaper has become a part of a lot of people’s daily or weekly rituals. Who doesn’t want their kids to reminisce on the times when their parents would wake them up with breakfast on a Sunday morning, so that they could do the Sunday word-search with them or read the Saturday’s comics to them?
Newspapers should be a staple in everyone’s household, if not for the crosswords and comics, then for its help in the exposure to world events, and its classic development of opinion.
